Whistle in 250 Words

I can be (when an unpredictable mood of  generosity finds me anyway) disgustingly easy to please when it comes to horror movies -- I have sat through far too many hours of bottom-of-the-barrel bullshit to not to be entertained by a movie that is at least competantly made. And so, with that level of "high praise" in mind, went Whistle. It's a bald tire of ideas whose rubber's been ripped off by every Final Destination movie before it -- with a good dose of Talk To Me to boot too -- but as angry and irritated as the movie often made me for its extraordinary plagiarisms of far better, funner previous materials, I still rode the dumb thing to its dumb end and I didn't feel totally dirty about it.

There are a couple of fun scenes -- the horror maze is well-staged with the movie's only genuinely likeable character in peril -- and there is one explosive set-piece of gore that I watched three times in a row, jaw agape. (You will know it when it hits you in the face with its viscera.) Corin Hardy isn't a bad director -- go see The Hallow if you haven't! -- but this is unfortunately closer to his limp Conjuring spin-off The Nun than it is to that original-concept creep-fest that gave him his career. But this will probably be the favorite for some 14-year-old new to the genre and as such my old, expired ass can't get too angry at it since that's who it's made for.

Whistle is in theaters tomorrow.